The Photo Blog

Sean Smith from X Factor’s sibling duo, Same Difference is another celebrity to brave the on-going national Testicular Cancer awareness campaign known as Checkum. We photographed Sean a few weeks ago in London, but I will hasten to add that his sister, Sarah wasn’t present at this particular gig! Instead she took a hasty retreat after dropping Sean at the studio door and returned later with a beaming smile all over her face - I can’t think why!

A positive and happy character (despite the three hours of nude labour Andrea (my Art Director) and I put him through, Sean was a delight to shoot and sailed through every pose like a true professional. I have posted one of Sean’s Checkum posters here, but more should be released once we receive approval. All images were shot with a Nikon D3x provided by Nikon UK in support of the campaign. The lens I used was my own Nikon 70-200 vr. We used Elinchrom flash as our light source. Click on any image for a larger view.

See an interview with Sean and Sarah here, where Sean talks about the Checkum shoot. There is also a newspaper article relating to the shoot here.

HOT OFF THE PRESS! An additional photo has been used by Heatworld (Heat magazine on-line) here.

(To find out more about the Checkum campaign and view additional images and stories, please scroll through my blog history. The Checkum celebrity campaign was created by Famousmales in association with Macmillan Cancer Support).

Australian-born Rugby League player, Nick Youngquest is one of the latest Celeb’s in the queue to be photographed for Checkum, the national testicular cancer awareness campaign. The shoot took place a short while ago in Manchester and is another supported by Nikon UK (who kindly lent us a Nikon D3x body). For further information and images relating to the Checkum campaign, please see my blog history. Another shoot is scheduled to take place tomorrow in Manchester. Keep watching this space - all will be revealed! Click on any image for a larger view.

Images shot with the Nikon D3x, 85mm 1.8 Nikon lens and Bowen’s lighting. Studio - Calumet, Manchester.

Ian Thraves With D3x camera and Nick Youngquest

Following on from my previous blog entries, a recent trip to London resulted in another celebrity in the can for the ongoing charity campaign,‘Checkum’. This time we photographed former Hollyoaks star Marcus Patrick (aka Ben Davies), who has also appeared in BBC TV’s Strictly Ice Dancing and Weakest Link, amongst others. Although we used a central London studio, my assistant Andrea and I carried our own Elinchrom studio flash and modifiers, along with the usual Nikon D2x and 70-200 2.8 vr and 50mm 1.8 lenses. In terms of lighting, we predominantly used a medium soft box on the key light and a second flash was modified with a large honeycomb and became the backlight. A third flash head was used to light the background and was tightly channeled to get a soft spot effect using a snoot.

The campaign, in aid of testicular cancer awareness is now underway and the posters are due to be on display at various public venues, including shopping malls, major rail stations and universities and colleges. Keep following my blog, Twitter and Facebook feeds for updates on the Checkum campaign - and learn who will be the next celebrity to bare all for charity? Click any image for large view.

If you have been following my blog you will know from past entries that I have been working on an on-going national charity campaign called ‘Checkum’.  The aim of the campaign, sponsored by famousmales.uk.net, is to raise awareness of testicular cancer and ultimately encourage men to get themselves regularly checked out against the disease.

Radio interview - how it feels to be photographed naked!

Celebrities from all walks of life have been agreeing to shed their clothes in the name of charity.  My most recent shoot involving Bargain Hunt’s TV Auctioneer Jonathan Pratt, has already kicked up a stir with radio station Newbury Sound, resulting in a radio interview and web article where Jonathan reveals how it felt to be photographed naked - all helping to gain valuable publicity!  You can see the web article and images I shot for the campaign, plus hear the interview with Jonathan here.

CLICK ANY OF THE ABOVE IMAGES FOR LARGER VIEW.

Related to this campaign, I have another two celebrity shoots coming up towards the end of this month in London - I’ll keep you posted!  Related past blog entries can be seen by clicking these links - link 1, link 2, link 3.